What ‘Diversity’ Means

Diversity doesn’t mean “diversity,” it means who is good and who is bad. The bad people can’t appeal to some technical mumbo-jumbo about what the word actually means. When we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean — neither more nor less.

I could make the exact same point about these mythical leftists who hate white people, who seem to exist solely in the feverish imaginations of conservatives who are desperate to believe someone is oppressing them.

There are no such thing as “whites” as a meaningful cultural category. I will grant you “Europeans.” Skin color is perfectly irrelevant. I don’t have much in common with Afghans or Turks.

In that case, should we dispense with the term “black” and use the scientifically correct term “Congoid?” (African is not precise enough, as it includes Khoisanids, formerly Capoids, who are a fairly distinct race, although there are groups that are mixtures such as the Xhosa).

I think there is a lot of self-hatred among the ‘white privilege’ crowd.

I think this is a too-quick run to psychology when politics explains the phenomenon more simply and more convincingly. White professionals embrace “diversity” as a means of legitimating themselves and their own power. For white women, it allows them to become simply “women” and not “white”. For white men, it is an escape route from their maleness and their whiteness which then can be attached to Rush Limbaugh and the like. Thanks to supporting “diversity”, a white man can at least feign a sexless and raceless identity — but only if he with some frequency ritually enacts the diversity creed. Most white professional men are at least willing, and many quite happy, with the deal as it delivers a decent amount of prestige and income in the trade.

Noah at March 25, 2014 at 4:48 pm — Um, Noah, there were two more paragraphs in the post to which you addressed this post. Is it possible for you to find agreement from me, with you, in them?

Anyway, not picking on Noah here (at least, not unless he resembles my remarks), but there is an insanely simple progression here.

1) Documented oppression — discrimination being the younger sibling of oppression — of minority groups. Do I need to list segregation enforced by law and its enforcers, “blacks need not apply” signs disappearing but the practice continuing unabated, glass ceilings for all minorities and women… this is not a pissing contest. This is an acknowledgement of reality that has declined but continues to exist.

2) It wasn’t going to stop on its own. That’s the insane part of insanely simple, because American commerce just changed its strategy to continue to see and use people as commodities to be exploited and discarded.

It took a law, a court case and armed troops to stop segregation in public schools. Is there anyone reading this who will assert that “separate but equal” was not discrimination?

Affirmative Action, as an executive order, laws and regulatory implementation, never once in any way — and formally contradicted in public documents — had anything to do with quotas.

I find it interesting as well as ironic that the formerly powerless — workers without the resources to use the law to fight their treatment — have been replaced by the still powerful corporations and their owners who disdain letting the law run its course because there is a slight risk that their profits will be less than they want them to be, after paying for court costs. Don’t take my word for it. Look up the annual category numbers at the EEOC, and you’ll find that the majority of claims are rejected as being without merit.

From that point of view, the simplest explanation is that corporations aren’t worried about underqualified workers. They’ve already shown, rubbing it in our faces if only some would open their eyes, that all they care about is minimizing workforce “expenses” in favor of profits. They want their discrimination powers, and they’ve successfully fought to keep them with some help from smoke and mirrors.

The final straw, for me: all any employer had to do to fully comply with the AA regs was to make their employment application process completely blind. In the end, hiring the objectively best qualified applicants completely protects them from claims and lawsuits. That some of them might run into an idiot judge and/or jury is not something they have a right to avoid. Appeals covers that part.

Noah: the problem with the fire fighters situation has nothing to do with the law and regs, and everything to do with politics and getting (re-)elected. I fully agree with you about its ridiculousness. I don’t agree that it’s a valid example in this argument. Public sector employment is completely removed from the profit-risk structures.

Yes, the privileged majority is losing its hegemony. Yes, the privileged majority is experiencing backlash for its perceived insistence on maintaining discrimination as a necessary aspect of the status quo. No, many of us do not agree that they deserved it. No, many of us argue against those perpetrating the backlash.

Most societies are diverse, if only by reason of conquest or domination. Now trying to live together WITHOUT one GROUP being dominant, that takes some work. The USA has come closer than most, but Europeans generally came here hating each other and throwing rocks or worse at each other. In the early 1990s, Americans of Croation and Serbian descent were throwing rocks at each other across the streets of Milwaukee.

Introducing the categories “black” and “white” sometimes gave these fueding ethnicities a common enemy to unite against, but then, that didn’t make a lot of sense either. And there were times and places in Texas where a “white” arrival from the southeast was told not to hold any prejudices against those who were “black” because “there are only two kinds of people here, Anglos and Mexicans.” That’s not morally any better, but its different.

Then there was the American of Welsh descent I met who hated living in Texas because he was commonly referred to as an “Anglo.”

“By encouraging the immigration of socially conservative white Christians? The growth in immigration in Britain came from the new EU members, particularly Poland. In general, shouldn’t social conservatives in wealthy Western countries be the ones trying to get more immigration from anywhere except other wealthy Western countries?”

Until recently, certainly during the Blair regime, immigration was mostly from the legacy Commonwealth countries. And while it may be true that, say, Jamaicans are more socially conservative and attend church more regularly than white Brits, in reality we see the same sorts of social outcomes amongst that population as we do amongst blacks in the US.

“all any employer had to do to fully comply with the AA regs was to make their employment application process completely blind. In the end, hiring the objectively best qualified applicants completely protects them from claims and lawsuits.”

Sailer’s take kind of reminds me, from the opposite perspective, of this Brittney Cooper article in Salon decrying the “diversity” on TV implemented by simply casting African American actors in culturally mainstream roles rather than creating more media about the “African American experience/identity”.

And while she’s superficially correct, what she misses and what Sailer misses is that America caters to a kind of suburban bourgeois mainstream, and always has. While Cooper is irritated that we are just shoehorning African Americans into “mainstream” roles, Sailer is frustrated that this “mainstream” is not being showcased as the “white realm,” but rather a realm that public policy is trying to open up to everyone. Yes, it might not seem “right” to Sailer or Cooper that “diversity” is just “middle class people who are of different races”, but it used to be that “America” meant “middle class people who are white.”

Though I grant that the self esteem of whites, particularly in these hard economic times, can be hurt because we don’t automatically code whiteness as “mainstream middle class” but rather a particular set of professions, dress, language, and values code as “mainstream middle class.”

What’s amusing about this whole thing is that if, in any other circumstance, someone demanded that multi-person organizations — say, corporate boards — all contained precisely equal numbers of men and women, it would rightly be seen as an absurd parody of the diversity movement.

And yet, corporate boards themselves are an absurd parody of “meritocracy”, in which members are chosen because they are glib tall people who are friends with other people on corporate boards.

M_Young, ‘Disparate Impact’ has an objective definition and implementation that was and is corrupted by the fallacious insistence on quotas. If anything — this being my contempt for PC speaking — disparate impact is an excuse to be arbitrary about the whole thing. It points to what without any rational consideration given (let alone rational analysis offered) to why and what can be done about it.

[NFR: Yeah, it’s kind of funny to me, the total freakout over Steve Sailer saying something that is perfectly obvious to any conservative who has observed the “diversity” ideology in the workplace. But hey, “OMG! Sailer cooties! Run!” — RD]

“The Founding Fathers disagreed with you, the US government continues to do so. The ‘street’ disagrees with you too.”

Apparently, critical thinking is hard to find.

Glaivester:

“In that case, should we dispense with the term “black” and use the scientifically correct term “Congoid?””

Black indeed means almost nothing. The descendants of former slaves in the US are often ethnically very mixed, often have some European (“white?”) ancestry and are culturally very different from recent African immigrants.

Glaivester, I think this comment of yours was a great example of right-wing paranoia, which is kind of funny as your whole point was that right-wingers aren’t paranoid. Oops!

I clicked through the link, and here in its entirety is the quote that shows that Senator Schumer is a “very obvious example” of a leftist who hates white people, or rather “only hates white Gentiles.” Here’s the full quote of Schumer from that article, with nothing omitted (it’s not clear whether all these paragraphs were continuous):

This reaction against social and cultural changes isn’t new to us. Edward Shils, a professor from the University of Chicago, wrote about the Temperance Movement identifying that it was about much more than abolishing liquor. In the 1880s the U.S. was a rural country and people were on farms and small towns living a clean, God-fearing life. By 1920, America had been urbanized and diversified because of manufacturing, immigration, and so many other forces.

And the cities were a totally different way of life with slums, bars and dance clubs, emerging suburbs and country clubs. Prohibition was not simply about abolishing alcohol; it was an attempt by rural Americans to pull their country back to a Jeffersonian agricultural ideal that was being rapidly replaced by a new cultural and economic order.

Today, we see the Tea Party doing much of the same thing. Tea Party adherents see an America that’s not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don’t like it.

Yes, things have changed. White Anglo-Saxon men are not exclusively running the country anymore. President Obama lost the white male vote 35%-62%, yet he recaptured the presidency by 5 million votes and a resounding Electoral College margin. And more profoundly, only 1 in 10 GOP voters were non-white.

[Fear of a changing America] also explains why so many on the right vehemently opposed the Senate immigration bill, a bill that actually embodies many conservative, non-governmental principals: reducing our deficit by billions, growing our economy, creating jobs and spurring new entrepreneurial activity. In a pre-tea party world, the Senate immigration bill would have been welcomed by House Republicans. However, the tea party rank and file know it’s a different America. It looks different; it prays different; it works different. This is unsettling and angering to some.

So this is presented as “an obvious example” of hatred of white Gentiles. And you wonder why people call you paranoid.

From your article:
Temperature: Heaters, vents, and fans are your allies in temperature control. Even in a well-designed solar-efficient greenhouse, outside conditions are sometimes so cold and cloudy that auxiliary heat is needed to keep plants growing at an optimum rate

That ain’t organic.

And good luck with defining the organic majority and organic religion for the US.

Glaivester, I agree with your response to Carlo about “black” and “African-American” being as misleading of terms as “white”. I would just add that much of the population of Africa is Middle-Eastern, that being the overwhelming majority in North Africa. (“Arab” is a poor choice of words here, as the region wasn’t Arabic-speaking until late in the first millenium AD, if that soon, due to the Islamic invasions.)

Aaron Gross, it is quite obvious from the extended quote that Schumer wants to see whites — or white gentiles — shrink even further as a component of the US. In fact, he wants to speed the process. Is that ‘hate’ — well, if directed against any other group, it would be deemed so.

It is also worth while to look at the entire essay, by Kevin MacDonald, in which the Schumer quote is embedded.

“The reference to Edward Shils is revealing: Shils, a member of the New York Intellectuals—a Jewish intellectual movement reviewed in Chapter 6 of my book The Culture of Critique—was a leading theorist of the idea that attempts by majorities to resist the increase in the power and influence of other groups are contrary to the democratic process. A defining feature of the New York Intellectuals was their hostile reinterpretation of Populism, the anti-elite insurrectionary movement of the 1890s.”

Clearly Schumer is trying to delegitimize the Tea Party, and in this he is connected to attempts to delegitimize the populism of the 1890s. He is trying to put beyond the pale any mobilization, however implicit, of whites to try to retain a semblance of the country their ancestors created. It is also interesting that Schumer uses the passive voice — America is changing. No, it is being changed as the result of specific policies.

Again, if this sort of rhetoric was directed against any other group, it would be termed ‘hate’.

M_Young: Aaron Gross, it is quite obvious from the extended quote that Schumer wants to see whites — or white gentiles — shrink even further as a component of the US. In fact, he wants to speed the process. Is that ‘hate’ — well, if directed against any other group, it would be deemed so.

A few thoughts:

1) In terms of raw numbers, there are currently more White Americans than there have ever been. Check the Census figures yourself. We’re quite far from being bred out.

2) Speaking as a White Anglo-Saxon Methodist-raised male from the countryside–and descended from some of the earliest English colonists in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia, no less–I’m not worried in the slightest that our culture is being overrun, squeezed out, or assimilated. Quite the opposite, in fact. If anything, we’re the ones doing the assimilating, as we have for centuries now.

3) Schumer nails something very important, and that is two very different concepts of what it means to be American.

To the element Schumer describes–whether they want to admit it or not–being American is an ethnic identity. Being truly American means being white, English-speaking, and Christian (and, in earlier days, Protestant, more specifically). It also, preferably, means being rural. You can be things other than white, English-speaking, and Christian (and rural) and still be a citizen, but you’re not–and never will be–American in that ethnic sense. Instead, you’re some variety of hyphenated-American. And, from there, of course, is the expectation–tacit or otherwise–that hyphenated-Americans show some degree of deference to the non-hyphenated.

To Schumer and the cosmopolitan elite (left and right), being American is primarily a matter of national political and legal identity. That is, being American means you’re a U.S. citizen, subject to U.S. law with all the rights and privileges that law confers. You live here, you pay taxes here, you vote here. Or, at least, you can do so and have done so. You participate in the political-economic apparatus that is America. Beyond that, though, being American is subject to no strict linguistic, ethnic, or racial criteria. Put another way, in this construct, all Americans are hyphenated-Americans.

M_Young, I simply meant that North Africans are mostly quite different from what is usually assumed to be “African” when used with “American”. I couldn’t tell, were you being facetious or serious in saying that they were whites?

Nothing makes me happier than reading M_Young’s comments — they make me literally grateful that I am not trapped in such a small and narrow mind. Enjoy the rest of your life, watching all your discarded values collapse around you.

America has been changing since its creation. Its founders put in place processes that made it possible. I am sure that they did not envision the extent to which it has changed, in the same way that an American from the 1860s couldn’t imagine women voting, or someone from the 1920s that an African-American could become President. Or–for that matter–that someone from 2014 would actually wish to return to the America of 1789.

Clearly Schumer is trying to delegitimize the Tea Party, and in this he is connected to attempts to delegitimize the populism of the 1890s.

That’s a fools game, although typical of real liberals, as well as culture-vulture faux leftists. The Tea Party concoction is not a movement of hard working farmers kept in debt by the Furnishing Man (aka simply “The Man” to those of African descent). Nor were the Populists of the 1890s a “white” party. It openly courted black votes and made promises to them. It was when the People’s Party fell apart that a portion of the “white” leadership made common cause with the Tillman-Vardaman style racists, who had abandoned the noblesse oblige of the southern bourbons.

“In terms of raw numbers, there are currently more White Americans than there have ever been. Check the Census figures yourself. We’re quite far from being bred out”

I believe that white Americans actually feel, slightly, in absolute terms in 2012. At any rate, there has been a steep decline in terms of proportion, as people on the left are so happy to point out. Please see the David Horsey cartoon and essay I linked to earlier. See just about anything relating to demographics written by Tim Wise.

“Speaking as a White Anglo-Saxon Methodist-raised male from the countryside–and descended from some of the earliest English colonists in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia, no less–I’m not worried in the slightest that our culture is being overrun, squeezed out, or assimilated. ”

Then you have your head in the sand. Perhaps you live in a part of the country that has yet to be inundated. Perhaps you have been able to insulate yourself from the changes. These changes go beyond just ‘skin color’ or language, but relate to the very character of the polity. Quite clearly, ethnic politics is the future (see La Raza, see the Asian/Pacific Islander caucus in Congress). The changes also effect the economic shape of the society — today the LA Times just came up with a report that SoCal was the worst area in the country in terms of income to house affordability. Well, that’s what you get when you import a servant class. To me, that is unAmerican.

“To Schumer and the cosmopolitan elite (left and right), being American is primarily a matter of national political and legal identity. That is, being American means you’re a U.S. citizen, subject to U.S. law with all the rights and privileges that law confers.”

Actually, since Schumer was promoting his amnesty for illegals, he doesn’t even believe in being subject to the law as being a characteristic of being American. At any rate, this ‘propositional’ notion of being American is quite new (watch ‘How the West was Won’ for example, for the old conception). Read Federalist 2. Fact is, the US has had a dominant ethnicity since its inception. That others, at the beginning of the process relatively small minorities, have been able to be incorporated into the body politic is a good thing, that that is quite different from electing a new body politic.

M_Young writes: “Is that ‘hate’ — well, if directed against any other group, it would be deemed so.”

Sure, it would be deemed so by people who are paranoid and delusional. There are plenty of people who believe that Republicans hate blacks and Hispanics, that they’re just the KKK without the white hoods. So if you’re saying that you and Glaivester aren’t the only people with a distorted view of reality, then yes, you’re right. So, congratulations, I guess.

Schumer made no reference, either explicitly or implicitly, to “white gentiles.” The categories he referenced were Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon men, and white men. That’s consistent with his topic of Prohibition, which (Schumer didn’t mention) some historians see as largely a battle between Anglo-Saxons and Catholics, especially Catholic immigrants. (The Catholics were white, of course, and many were Nordic.)

Again, there was no reference there to either Gentiles or to Jews. This is something that you and Glaivester “discovered” there yourselves.

Re: In that case, should we dispense with the term “black” and use the scientifically correct term “Congoid?”

“Congoid” is not a scientifically correct term. Genetically, the Nilotic peoples of East Africa have very little in common with people from West Africa. Barack Obama, for example, could perhaps be best described as being an entirely different race than his wife.(The Bantu expansion did of course affect East Africa, but Obama’s ethnic group isn’t a Bantu one).

Sort of off topic, but not entirely — California state senator Leland Yee was arrested on bribery and gun running charges.

Yee has been among the leaders in promoting Asian (Chinese, really) ethnic interests in the state, for example campaigning against a proposal for a change in the UC admission system that probably would have slightly disfavored Asian applicants. (This was before the latest affirmative action dusty up). Interesting too is that these charges are somehow mixed up with the underworld of San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Aaron Gross, you cited Senator Schumer as mentioning Anglo-Saxons rather than white Gentiles in his speech. This is true, but there does seem to me to be a certain amount of coding in the term Anglo-Saxon. The AS were Germanic invaders to the previously Celtic Great Britain. (England and Wales had admittedly been taken into the Roman Empire, but there probably wasn’t too much Latin admixture into the population.) So AS properly speaking shouldn’t refer to anyone outside of England, and genetically the inhabitants of Albion are quite a mixed lot. So, AS does seem to be a terribly misleading term, with great potential for abuse. Given this, mightn’t NY’s senior senator in fact have been using the term for white Gentiles, or at least white Protestants?

Speaking of the religious distinctions within Christianity: I don’t know who these historians are, but the idea that Prohibition was AS vs. Catholic in large part, strikes me as very dubious. Catholics just weren’t that strong then, particularly on a state-by-state basis. That is, as an amendment requires three-quarters of the state legislatures to agree, it can succeed by having almost all of the less-populated, fairly rural states on its side, even without much support of the few but more populous and largely urban states. But the Catholic immigrants were concentrated, I believe, in a few metropolises, whose states got no more votes than did the more small town and country states. Ergo, a rural vs. urban divide does make a lot more sense to me in explaining Prohibition, and for that matter Populism, tho the latter did try to court urban wage earners, if largely unsuccessfully.

M_Young, thanks for the answer. I’m still a bit confused as to how you can be both, but that’s my row to hoe. The soccer player in question did look like he could be European, didn’t he?

…which has little relationship with the facts. Any White American fears of being overrun are the proverbial elephant shrieking in terror at the sight of a mouse.

Then you have your head in the sand. Perhaps you live in a part of the country that has yet to be inundated. Perhaps you have been able to insulate yourself from the changes. These changes go beyond just ‘skin color’ or language, but relate to the very character of the polity.

I’ll give you this: I don’t live along or anywhere near the border with Mexico. That said, the Mexican immigrants and the descendants thereof who form the majority demographic in those regions came here to get away from Mexico, not to make America into Mexico.

As to these changes in the very character of the polity, you’re right–they do go far beyond skin color and language. And, that’s why hanging angst and grievance over those changes around the neck of America’s shifting demographics is a load of crap. Those changes have to do with cultural shifts within “White America” itself, and, when you really drill down to it, that is what has people like you so scared and angry.

The changes also effect the economic shape of the society — today the LA Times just came up with a report that SoCal was the worst area in the country in terms of income to house affordability. Well, that’s what you get when you import a servant class.

No, that’s what you get when you combine decades of NIMBYism with zoning and building restrictions which preclude denser development in the face of massive ongoing population growth.

To me, that is unAmerican.

On the contrary. Importing a servile class is as American as apple pie. (I’m sorry, but you walked right into this one.) We’ve been doing it all along. See: the poor English and Scots-Irish brought over to the colonies as indentured servants. Oh yeah, there was also that whole slavery thing…

Fact is, the US has had a dominant ethnicity since its inception. That others, at the beginning of the process relatively small minorities, have been able to be incorporated into the body politic is a good thing, that that is quite different from electing a new body politic.

“Few of their children in the country learn English… The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages … Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

Benjamin Franklin said that in reference to the large numbers of Germans immigrating to Pennsylvania at the time. Today, Germans form the largest self-identified ethnic group in America, and yet, mysteriously, there’s no fear of a mass Teutonic uprising. The very notion of such a thing is laughable and absurd. That’s because, among other things, their descendants have long since abandoned German for English. When the time came, they fought their ancestral homeland for their new one. In short, they became us.

…which has little relationship with the facts. Any White American fears of being overrun are the proverbial elephant shrieking in terror at the sight of a mouse.”

In 1970, the ‘Hispanic surnamed’ population of California was 12%, that was up from 11% in 1960 and 10% in 1950. Four decades later, it (now called ‘Latino’) is something like 40%, surpassing ‘Anglos’.

That is being overrun. It has political consequences, it has huge economic consequences, it has educational consequences (California’s test scores on the NAEP etc are now just barely above Louisiana and other deep South states).

“I’ll give you this: I don’t live along or anywhere near the border with Mexico. That said, the Mexican immigrants and the descendants thereof who form the majority demographic in those regions came here to get away from Mexico, not to make America into Mexico.”

Actually, Mexicans, even Mexicans here in the US, are intensely proud of Mexico, and would like to make the US more like their homeland in many ways. Maintaining, of course, the transfer payments, higher wages, better public amenities, etc of the US. It is hard to see how that can be done long term.

““Few of their children in the country learn English… The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages … Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”

Benjamin Franklin said that in reference to the large numbers of Germans immigrating to Pennsylvania at the time. ”

But the stream of German immigration was stopped, by the Napoleonic wars. Further, you conveniently gloss over the very real conflict between the more Germanic heartland and the Anglo dominated coast over WWI and WWII.

This is really sad, truly. It is utter ignorance, masquerading as a knowing wisdom. As if the conditions in a post-industrial, welfare state are the same as 115 years ago. There is no more frontier, there are no more large scale industries which require vast amounts of human muscle. Native (born) Americans no longer have 4-5 kids per family, we don’t share a border with Germany or Ireland or take your Ellis Island nostalgia pick of a country, those countries don’t have a still held on to grudge about ‘half of their country being stolen’ (the half with the good roads too!), and finally at the end of the day, Mexicans aren’t Germans.

“The changes also effect the economic shape of the society — today the LA Times just came up with a report that SoCal was the worst area in the country in terms of income to house affordability. Well, that’s what you get when you import a servant class.

No, that’s what you get when you combine decades of NIMBYism with zoning and building restrictions which preclude denser development in the face of massive ongoing population growth.”

Really, you know little about SoCal, but you sure do have the Libertarian/GOP chamber of commerce wing talking points down. Because zoning and building restriction is not very effective. There was a bit of a slow growth movement in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was quashed. And why not, instead of doing denser development (not a panacea, btw, because density creates its own problems), stop the source of the massive population growth? Americans as a whole now want a stable population, as evidenced by their own reproductive practices — why foist mass growth on us?

“To me, that is unAmerican.

On the contrary. Importing a servile class is as American as apple pie. (I’m sorry, but you walked right into this one.) We’ve been doing it all along. See: the poor English and Scots-Irish brought over to the colonies as indentured servants. Oh yeah, there was also that whole slavery thing…”

I seem to remember slavery and service for a period of years being abolished around 160 years ago, and most people thinking that was a good thing.

“M_Young, thanks for the answer. I’m still a bit confused as to how you can be both, but that’s my row to hoe. The soccer player in question did look like he could be European, didn’t he?”

I believe in HBD. But it is also funny to play with marginal or little known cases. Many berbers — of which Zinadine Zidan is one–look as white (or European) as your typical Tuscan or Southern Frenchman. They were, of course, colonized and oppressed by Arabs, who tend to be swarthier. They still are generally considered more mellow in their Islam. And interesting group indeed.

M_Young: In 1970, the ‘Hispanic surnamed’ population of California was 12%, that was up from 11% in 1960 and 10% in 1950. Four decades later, it (now called ‘Latino’) is something like 40%, surpassing ‘Anglos’.

…and, by the 3rd generation, the majority of them speak English as their first language and identify as Americans. They’re assimilating just as earlier waves of immigrants did.

But the stream of German immigration was stopped, by the Napoleonic wars.

Wrong. German immigration continued through the 19th century, the single largest wave being in the 1880s.

Further, you conveniently gloss over the very real conflict between the more Germanic heartland and the Anglo dominated coast over WWI and WWII.

I assume you’re referring to the anti-German paranoia during WWI. German Americans responded to that by Anglicizing their names and doubling down on shows of loyalty to the U.S. During WWII, Roosevelt made a point of putting German-Americans–e.g. Eisenhower, Nimitz–in positions of responsibility.

There was no German-American uprising. There was no fifth column. There was no internal threat of a German overrun of America.

I seem to remember slavery and service for a period of years being abolished around 160 years ago, and most people thinking that was a good thing.

Abolition was a good thing. I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said importing a servant class, which you said was unAmerican, was in fact, based on the historical evidence, quite American. That doesn’t mean it was a good thing. Something’s American-ness has no automatic bearing on its righteousness or lack thereof. We’ve done plenty of good as a nation; we’ve done plenty of evil as a nation. As with all nations, we’re capable of both, and our history is a mixture of the two.

Diversity doesn’t change a thing. Only those who are fixated on race uphold diversity as some kind of noble virtue. White people are diverse the same as any other race or ethnic tribe. Every person no matter what color or ethnic background has at some point in life been treated poorly and discriminated against. Diversity doesn’t change human nature and the quest for more wealth and power. Diversity only serves as a touchy feely facade for those with a guilty conscience about race.

“As if the conditions in a post-industrial, welfare state are the same as 115 years ago. There is no more frontier, there are no more large scale industries which require vast amounts of human muscle. Native (born) Americans no longer have 4-5 kids per family, we don’t share a border with Germany or Ireland or take your Ellis Island nostalgia pick of a country, those countries don’t have a still held on to grudge about ‘half of their country being stolen’ (the half with the good roads too!), and finally at the end of the day, Mexicans aren’t Germans.”

Liberals say that things change, and because of that our laws regarding marriage must change, and the Constitution must be reinterpreted to keep up with the times, but our ideas about immigration must REMAIN THE SAME, regardless of the clear changes that have taken place in our country, such as the ones you mentioned.